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Month: April 2014

The website “Global Voices” is an international community blog that shares bloggers’ stories from all over the world. It is considered “citizen journalism” as it brings about personal contributions from citizens around the globe on a non-profit basis. In his article “What is ‘alternative’ journalism?”, Chris Atton describes citizen’s media as a “philosophy of journalism and set of practices embedded within the everyday lives of citizens and media content that is both driven and produced by those people.”

Indeed, articles published on Global Voices, such as “The ‘Woman Who Was Dragged’ and Killed by Brazil’s Military Police” report on stories of people’s every day lives that are not seen in our mainstream media. The article, written by a Brazilian citizen, describes the horrors of a coloured woman who was shot in a favela in Rio de Janeiro by the military police. The article describes in detail what followed the scene and even includes a graphic video of someone who caught the entire scene on tape. The post includes some Brazilian news articles that are translated in English and even some tweets from other citizens, and their concerns about the accident. This story highlights an even bigger situation in Brazil. Women of colour are still being discriminated against and there are still big security issues within the slum areas of Brazil. The article includes people’s input about these issues from Facebook comments such as this one.

“The tone was that of despair amongst many activists and users of Facebook and Twitter. Activist Rodrigo Cardia wrote that the case “probably would soon be forgotten because the victim was black and poor – like many other people who are killed daily by the military police throughout Brazil.”

Reading stories such as this one on Global Voices enables us to get a better understanding of situations going on in other countries from a local perspective. We would have never heard of this story in the mainstream Western media. Having citizen input, through these types of blogs, allows for greater openness and variety in terms of stories from around the world.